glb_gtz's blog

Almost everything is finished. I have the floppies working 100%. The serial drive is working 99.99%. It works, but the original PC code I downloaded from the web does not have the checksum calculations. I might fix this someday, but not today. The only issue I see so far is loading the ROMs when the system is first plugged into the wall. But by hitting the reset button, the system loads correctly. The ROM actually sets up two 16 Meg drives in one 32 Meg file. I had an issue with Copy II+ and 32 Meg drives.

I am still have a few issues, but everything seems to be working. I have been playing Castle Wolfenstein of a floppy using a keyboard, not an easy task. I am working on the joystick hardware. I want to interface the standard PC type joystick, since that is what I have. It should be basically the same as the Apple joystick. I have the code written, now I have to build the hardware.

The floppy is working 100%. I thought the reading and writing from the drive would be the hardest part. I also thought that moving the head would be the easiest part. I cannot believe how wrong I was. It ended up being much easier to read and write. The documentation on moving the head states that different phases should be turned on then off one at a time. It appears that ProDOS as well as other programs turn on the next phase before turning off the previous phase. After I figured out that the documentation was wrong, it did not take too long to get the head stepping to working.